wrap my heart in a nest of stars
by Canvas Constellations
Summary: He doesn't break hearts like hers. He avoids them entirely. [A collection of Cresswell one-shots]
1. Kiss Me

**This was supposed to be only a hundred words. I got a little carried away.**

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**Kiss Me**

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**Prompt: No way out**

He whispers it against her lips, two simple, yet impossible words. He trails his breath (a warm, soft flutter) down her neck and presses the words on her shoulder. She catches a hint of teeth, the ghost of a tongue. She catches her breath, and holds it. His hands move away from her waist to the small of her back, pulling her in closer.

She shudders.

"Cress," he says her name like a prayer. He says those two words again like a request.

_He's drunk_, she thinks. _He's drunk, he's drunk, he's drunk._

But his eyes are so clear, sharp, though very diluted. (Maybe that's her doing. Maybe. Just maybe.)

There's a slight quirk to his lips, a soft tilt upwards, a tickle of amusement. She remembers when his request had once been hers, spoken by cracked lips and a fever-addled mind. Spurred on by a heart that she was certain had been broken long before it had a chance to beat as a whole.

He asks her again, though this time it sounds more like a command than a request. _He will not remember this in the morning_, she thinks, or maybe she hopes. This time the request is being made by two bottles of wine. Her heart twists, the breath she has been holding rushes out. She reaches out and places a hand on his chest. The fabric of his shirt if soft, warm.

_Kiss me._

She counts six unsteady heartbeats before she bites her lips and stands up on tip toes. _He will not remember this in the morning._

(But he does.)


	2. Promises

**Promises**

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**Prompt: Under the rain**

After it's all over, after the dust has settled and Levana is gone, gone for good, after everything, he runs. _They_ run. She wants to see the world, and he's a little too tired of court. They have to go back at some point, of course, if Cinder's angry comms have anything to say, but they have a little while to themselves for now. A moment to breathe.

He takes her to see the ruins of castles, and vast, vast oceans. He takes her to the pyramids, to Stonehenge, and to the movies. They laugh at the bad dialog, Cress clenches his hand at the scary bits, and Thorne throws popcorn at the row in front of them. They lie down later under the stars and she tells him about all the constellations.

(He thinks about kissing her, but doesn't.)

He tells her about Los Angeles, and how you can't see the stars there, as if they don't exist. She looks at him, wide-eyed and asks him to her tell more about his home. He almost winces at the word.

(Yet he twins his fingers with hers and tells her about everything and nothing.)

She falls asleep in the grass, with his warm hand in hers, his fingers tracing idle patters on her skin. He watches her, the curve of her nose, the dance of moonlight on her cheeks and he wonders how she can be real.

He has to wake her when it starts to rain.

The sound of their feet is a whisper against the grass. A frantic hush-hush as they run (and that is all they know for now; how to run, run, run). The rain is a roar, loud, insistent, _pouring_. Cress laughs, a half-scream sort of unabashed laugh that he hasn't heard from her before.

He stops. His hand, still in hers, tug her back with him. They stand there for a moment, under the roar of the rain and the stars. Cress' laughter fades away from her lips, but remains dancing in the corner of her eyes. He thinks about kissing her, about old promises, and a question she had asked him once upon a time, with a broken voice and a broken heart.

_(He wants to kiss her. He wants to run.)_

He didn't have an answer for her then. He has now. Though he doesn't think he should tell her that. He remembers what her father had said to him. He remembers all the things he's ever done. He remembers their talk about heroes and even after all this time, he doesn't really think he's one. At least not the kind she deserves.

"Captain?" she asks with a soft tilt of her head.

She's probably not real, he decides.

A raindrop catches on her lashes. They're both horribly soaked through, and Thorne knows that they should break this moment or whatever this is, and rush for the Rampion before they catch a cold. Bloodshot eyes and a runny nose are not the best look for him.

She clenches his hand tight. The smear of laughter in her eyes melts away to worry. He's never been wide-eyed and speechless before.

"What's wrong?" she asks. The rain almost drowns her voice, just as it drains the flush from her cheeks. Her lips are pale too, and he yearns to kiss some colour into them. A yearn that manifests into an ache that throbs in time with his heart.

He plays her question again and again in his mind. An endless loop that is almost torture. He shouldn't tell her. He shouldn't have an answer at all. He should run. He _wants_ to run. But he wants to say the words too. He wants her to know.

"I think," he says. He holds her hand tight and pulls her a step closer. Lightning flashes and paints the sky into daylight for just a moment. Then, three heartbeats later, thunder rumbles. Cress squeaks.

(_I think I'm in love with you_)

"I think we should go back to the Rampion." He swallows, then smiles. She frowns, knowing that wasn't what he had wanted to say, but he's already running, and pulling her in with him. _Hush-hush , _the grass whisper of their retreat. Thorne bites his tongue and holds on to Cress just a little too tight.

In their hurry, Cress slips once, but before she can fall, Thorne pulls her up, steadies her. Three steps in, he slips, and in an effort to help, Cress tumbles down along with him. They're a mess of limbs and laughter and mud and by the time they've stepped out from the lash of the rain and into the carefully controlled warmth of the Rampion, they're both giggling helplessly.

He stops laughing first. Their hands and their clothes are covered in mud. There is a brown splotch on Cress' cheek. She's standing so close he could hear her heartbeat if he tried.

So he kisses her then, because he can't really bring himself to say three little words. She's just as surprised as when he had kissed her the first time, but now her hands manage to find themselves around his neck, though tentative at first. He tastes rainwater on her lips, and chocolate on her tongue. He tastes _home_ in her, and he traces the letters down her throat.

When he pulls back, the colour on her cheeks is back, twice as bold, though he would like to bite a little more red into her lips. He kisses her again, softly this time, languidly, drawing tiny squeaks and fluttery sighs.

She looks dazed, and he smiles his crooked smile. Their breathing, though unsteady falls in sync. There is confusion in her eyes, but also a hint of knowing.

The words are still stuck in his throat, unwilling to be swallowed back, but unwilling to be let out either. So he keeps them at the tip of his tongue and kisses her once more.

Just to make sure she's found her answer.


	3. Wrap me up in Dreams and Death

**Because every fandom needs a Vampire AU.**

~:~

**Wrap me up in Dreams and Death**

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**Prompts: Hunger, Innocence**

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(excerpt)

He dreams of funny things, of lace and ribbons, and video games. He dreams of nothing sometimes. He dreams of wide blue eyes and pale fingers tugging at his sleeves. For a whole decade he chases after honey blonde hair, and pretty singing voices.

_ (It's never her.)_

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**All parts of the Vampire!AU have been moved to a fic of its own: _In Dreams and Death_.**


	4. In my Veins

**Part two of the vampire AU.**

**~:~**

**In my Veins**

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**Prompt: **_Oh, you're in my veins and I cannot get you out_

_Oh, you're all I taste at night inside of my mouth._

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(excerpt)

He dreams, or maybe be remembers. Snow against the sky, under his shoes, on her cheek; she laughs, a giggle really, as her fingers play with her hair. She says something, something inconsequential, something funny. He can't remember what, and her words melt away like the snow.

Her eyes widen as he says something back, and she makes a small, adorable mouse-like noise at the back of her throat. Her lips are almost blue, her skin as cold as ice. Her teeth so, so sharp. There is a curve of innocence in the tilt of her chin, a trace of hunger in her eyes.

She looks like she could be made out of marble, another statue in this hall of ruins that is her home. She looks like she could be made out of eternity.

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**All parts of the Vampire!AU have been moved to a fic of its own: _In Dreams and Death_.**


	5. All that Glitters

**My friend wanted a Dragon!AU and since I was blocked halfway though part three of the Vampire!AU I decided that a small break was called for. Unfortunately I won't be able to finish part three this month, but I'll try my best to have it written up by the first week of July. In the meantime, have a kleptomanic dragon Thorne and ever so slightly magical Cress.**

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**All that glitters**

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"Are you _stupid?"_

"I'm gonna say no, but I'm sure you'd like to disagree."

"Thorne," the pretty girl with dirt on her face pinches the bride of her nose, looking like she wants to hurt someone. "You _stole _a _person._"

"You can't prove that," Cress watches her kidnapper fold his arms defensively.

"She's sitting right here, you idiot" the girl says with a pointed jab in Cress' direction.

Thorne smoothly slides up in front of her, blocking her from the pretty girl's line of sight. "Where?" he feigns.

"Oh my stars!" While the girl starts up with her exasperated chiding, Cress takes the time to tap a, low attractive tune on the side of her chair, letting a little magic slip into the room, gauging it, collecting all sorts of information like the presence of something half-alive in the next room, and a jar of metal fingers on a shelf full of silicone hearts. She studies the girl and her kidnapper too. Her magic flutters about them, almost close enough to touch.

The girl is not all there, she senses, and her kidnapper has fire in his lungs.

"Why? Why. _Why _would you do this?" the girl asks. "What made you think that this was even remotely okay?"

Thorne takes his time, then mumbles something too soft to hear. The girl narrows her eyes and punches him in the arm.

"I didn't get that," she says.

"Hair," Thorne repeats, a touch louder this time. "It's her hair. It's all shiny and golden."

The pretty girl explodes into another tirade. Cress taps three times, and hums a soft, soft tune to release a stronger probing spell. There are mostly cold things here, things that were never alive, but someday will be attached to someone or something that breathes. There are papers, and grease, and clothes somewhere. There is diligence and love in this place. There was laughter here recently too.

"I found her in a tower, you know," Thorne says, trying to defend himself. "Locked up. She's probably ecstatic to be out and if you think about it, I actually did her a favour."

"You don't know that. She might not have wanted to leave."

"Of course she did!"

"Did you _ask _her?"

Throne rolls his eyes. "Well, of course. But as you might have noticed, she isn't talking. Won't even tell me her name. All she does is…squeak."

Cress squirms under the pretty girl's calculative stare.

"She could be a criminal." The girl says.

That brings on a pause. Thorne turns around to look at Cress, then back at the girl who presses her lips together, then sighs.

"Okay, maybe not."

Cress indeed hasn't spoken since she left the tower. It's not because she doesn't want to. It's just…she's never spoken to another person other than Mistress Sybil before. She'd never even seen one. She doesn't know what to say, especially to someone so beautiful as Thorne. (What if she makes a fool of herself?)

He was all dappled shades of brown and blue when he crashed into her prison.

(All claws and wings and fire.)

He was beautiful then, as he is now in smooth skin and soft hair. Well, Cress imagines it's soft. It looks soft. She hasn't touched it (yet) so she can only guess by sight. He had lain in the cracked floor amid the rubble and dust for long minutes after his crash. Then slowly, oh so slowly, he'd turned into this wingless, delicate form.

_Aces, _was the first thing he'd said to her.

She'd wanted to touch him then, but instead she'd made an unattractive noise and hidden behind a toppled over reading table.

Her spell pinches her as it finds something interesting—drops of electricity and moonlight in the pretty girl's blood. Cress sucks in a sharp breath as she realizes who this girl with the missing spaces is.

Oh, oh, oh. No.

She should go to Mistress Sybil with this information. She should go back to her prison and report her findings to the person she owes her life to. She should…she should…

She feels lightheaded and dizzy and sick. She can already feel the walls of the tower closing in around her, feel its cold, dry embrace even as she sits in a wide sunlit room.

A warm hand finds hers and gentle fingers coax themselves around her. Thorne's hair looks even softer this close. Everything about him looks soft, even his worry.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

He's so, so beautiful. And so kind, she can tell now. And really, he's hardly a kidnapper, but rather a heroic rescuer if she thinks about it. He's also very beautiful.

"Would you like some water?" the pretty girl asks. "We'll take you back home, okay?"

"If you want to go back," Thorne adds hastily and the girl narrows her eyes.

If they go back, Cress could hand the pretty girl over in person. That would undoubtedly bring some sort of reward at least. Mistress would like that very much. She might even forget about Cress leaving her tower. She would go back to her cold, stone walls and velvet curtains. Or, if Mistress allows it, she might even be set free. The pretty girl is very, very important.

(But the hand on hers is so warm.)

Cress makes a decision.

"No," she tells Thorne.

She will not go back. She doesn't want to go back.

She wants to breathe in the rain and dust. She wants walk on sand. She wants to feel the sunlight on her skin, and wind in her hair. She wants to know affection, and jealously, and heartache, and love. She wants to know how pineapples grow.

(She wants to wrap a blue-eyed boy in her arms until her heart explodes.)

She twists her hair around her wrist and watches Thorne follow the movement with his eyes. Locks and stone are not for her anymore. She will not be shacked to her tower. She will run, and scream, tumble, and seize everything this world has to offer her.

It's a scary thought. It's terrifying. But it's something she has to do. She'd missed so much already.

She's never going back.

(Besides, her room would have been too small to keep a dragon, and Mistress Sybil didn't allow her pets.)


	6. Dream a Little Dream

**For the tireless, and encouraging Megan the Lunar. Part three (but unfortunately not the last) of the vampire!au.**

**~:~**

**Dream a Little Dream**

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**Prompt (by anon) :** _Dance me to your beauty like a burning violin_

_Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in_

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(excerpt)

Sometimes she feels a funny prickle in her skin and an old ache in her teeth. She feels herself craving for something she can't define, and sometimes, for the blink of a moment, she feels like someone else.

(Someone lost and broken. Someone sad, and dead.)

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**All parts of the Vampire!AU have been moved to a fic of its own: _In Dreams and Death_.**


	7. Quiet Beginnings

**Here's something short and light I wrote while procrastinating.**

**~:~**

**Quiet Beginnings**

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Prompt: Happiness

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She does not know that there's a ring somewhere in a compartment too high for her to reach in the Rampion. She doesn't know that he's been planning this scenario at least a hundred different times, a hundred different ways, doesn't know that a silly cord of wire was never in any of his imagined scenes. She doesn't know that he's half expecting her to say no because he _still _has inklings that she's too good for him, will always be.

She doesn't know that he doesn't know why he's decided to forgo the big romantic gesture and the very expensive ring for this quiet moment of happiness and a frazzled wire.

She looks at the makeshift ring, then up at him, then back down at the ring.

"Oh," she says.

And then she starts crying.

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**I've been thinking about writing something long for Cresswell. Something really long. Like novel-length long. But I'm just not sure if I'll find the patience to finish it (I don't want to have an incomplete multi-chapter fic haunting me), and I'm not sure which of my plot bunnies I want to expand for starters anyway. I have way too many AUs swimming in my head. (PM me if you ever want to discuss my cray cray ideas.)**

**In the meanwhile, I published a poem (yay!). It's called "Stars" and it was published by Strange Horizons last week (there's a podcast as well). I'd love it if you guys could give it a read. And thank you again for the reviews and all the encouragement. If I could, I would hug each and every one of you.**


	8. Almost and Maybes

**Another short ficlet. I spent all my energy in the mini ship week and I'm tapped out. Good thing my classes have ended early this semester.**

**~:~**

**Almost and maybes**

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**Prompt (by anon): **_"If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it."_

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Her laughter, he decides, sounds like rain. He could allow himself to drown in it.

She walks into a room, and he can _feel_ it, like a sixth sense or something. And it's not because her feet are the lightest of all the others in the ship. He's tried to memorise all the different strides of his crew—partly so he could freak them out and partly for just the convenience of it.

Cinder falls a breath heavy on one side, and walks like she owns the ship. Wolf, when he finds a reason to venture out of Scarlet's room, is terrifyingly soundlessly. Kai is all confidence in his feet until he realises he's lost. Iko is boundless energy—all skips and leaps and tumbles instead of any coherent sort of walk.

But Cress—he doesn't need to hear the whisper of her feet to know she's near. She's like the sun, and even when he's as blind as a bat, she's a beacon, and what he really is, is a moth gone crazy. Her name rests in his lungs like a ghost, and she really shouldn't be haunting him when all he has to do is reach out to feel her hand in his.

Her face is a blur to him, a fogged up memory like a stained photograph that never happened. All he remembers is hair, and if he holds his breath, he can still feel it sliding through his fingers.

She's a song in his mind. She's the tap-tap-tap of keys coordinated to the sound of opera music. She's wild innocence and a dreaming wisdom. She's joy. She's warm and lonely and vast. She's a nebula. She's that exultant sound she makes at the back of her throat when she catches him cheating at cards. She's Iko's skip and dance walk. She's an impossibility breathing like any other mortal.

He sometimes wonders why she's even looking for a hero in him when she's a much better one all by herself.

She's selfless and kind and brave. When she sings, she hums the melody, quiet and soft. She tastes the words under her breath. When she loves, she's screaming at the top of her lungs, like it doesn't matter if her voice breaks when he doesn't whisper the words back to her. She loves like she could love enough for the both of them. She loves like she could patch hearts with sheer will and sellotape.

If he holds her hand too long, his chest starts to hurt.

(He can't make up his mind if he hates the feeling or not.)

Some nights he stays up counting sheep. Some nights he falls asleep wondering what it would be like if he was allowed to love her back. He dreams of slaying dragons to prove himself to her. She kisses him on tip toes at the base of a tower she was never trapped in.

Her lips, he decides, are an ocean.

And he's drowning.

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**Next up, Jealous!Thorne. I'm about halfway done with it. If I don't procrastinate tomorrow, I should have it finished and ready in no time.**


	9. Carswell's Guide to Being Jealous

**In my defense, I did not procrastinate. I read _Winter_ and cried for a week.**

**This chapter is post-Winter, though it doesn't have any spoilers. I actually wrote most of it before I read _Winter._**

**~:~**

**Carswell's Guide to Being Jealous**

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**Prompt (by Cher): **Jealous!Thorne

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I

The Lunar boy integrates himself into their circle like a snake. A sly, nasty snake with cheekbones that belong in a net-drama.

Thorne doesn't hate him. He really doesn't. He just wishes the slimy, pretty reptile would do them all a favour and set himself on fire. Or maybe jump into Artemisia lake and not bother to resurface.

That would be nice.

He's always hanging around them, and Thorne wonders if he ever goes home, or does he simply lurk in the palace hallways waiting for Cress to pass by so he can swoop in and steal all her attention with his stupid straight-teeth smiles, and stupid net-drama cheekbones?

He feels something poisonous coil inside him whenever she smiles a timid smile at the snake, or whenever she goes red in the face at one of _his _complements. Those cheekbones are probably glamoured.

"I'm not jealous," he tells Iko, jaw tight and hands clenched. "I'm not jealous." He repeats it to Cinder, to Scarlet, to all his other friends, to Kai's advisor (who hadn't even asked), to the porcelain vase in his room, to his own gaunt reflection. He's not jealous.

He's just having a little trouble breathing is all.

II

She can't breathe. His fingers run circles along her spine. Soft, sweeping swirls, round and round and round. It's making her dizzy and slow. Niyor is saying something, but she can't hear a word. Her whole world has narrowed down to Captain Thorne and his fingers breathing secret messages on her back.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels a little guilty though. She shouldn't be spacing out in the middle of a conversation. Niyor is a nice person. He is, in fact, one of the few nice Lunars to be part of the Artemisian court. He's kind and charming and he's had no trouble fitting in within the new Queen's circle of friends, except maybe with Thorne. The Captain hasn't been openly hostile, though he hasn't been very warm with Niyor either. For one, he keeps calling him New York.

Maybe it has something to do with what Iko has been telling everyone—that Niyor has a crush on Cress. Maybe. But Cress has some trouble believing that. To start, she can barely talk to him little more than two sentences. Sure, he's nice and funny and gorgeous. But the thing is, he's _nice, _and _funny, _and _gorgeous, _and Cress has yet to master the art of speaking to another person without stuttering, or freezing, or fainting, or hiding behind Thorne (she _has _been practicing though).

Then there's the fact that she's also all kinds of awkward in general. She's not confident like Cinder or Scarlet, not heart-stopping beautiful like Iko or Winter. She's mediocre at best, with only her advanced coding skills as her saving grace. Except how does one even seduce a boy with _that_? Reconfigure the electrical grid, so the street lights spells out his name in Morse? Hack into the broadcast system so the music channels only play his favourite songs? Steal from a bank and transfer all of its money into his account? Thorne would certainly love the last one. Maybe she could line that up for Valentines' day.

Maybe then he'll finally like her back. Or maybe she'll get arrested and won't have to watch him flirting with Iko and Cinder all day.

Although, ever since Niyor showed up, the Captain _has _been flirting a fair share with Cress too. With extra hand holding, and extra hugs, and extra all things tactile—including this breath-stopping thing he's doing to her back right now, this almost absent sort of contact, like he's touching her without being aware. Perhaps he is. Or perhaps, Iko's right. Perhaps Thorne _is _jealous.

But Niyor doesn't have a crush on her. That part Iko got wrong, she's sure.

She doesn't notice that Niyor has stopped talking until Thorne's fingers stop their movement abruptly. They're both starting at her—Niyor expectantly, and Thorne...Thorne has the strangest expression, one Cress has never seen on him.

Was she asked a question? Seems like she was asked a question. Should she ask Niyor to repeat himself? But then he would know that she wasn't paying attention. Which would be rude...right?

"Um," she looks from one face to the other, unsure. "Yes?"

Niyor's face immediately lights up, and just as he takes a step towards her, Thorne takes a step back, as if she'd hit him.

"That's great," Niyor says, taking both of her hands in his. He kisses her knuckles, smiling against her skin. "I'll pick you up at six."

Oh.

Oh no.

III

She tells Iko before anyone else, hoping her friend can fix this. Iko presses her lips together and stays silent for so long Cress imagines she can almost hear her fan whirring as she processes this disaster.

It's perhaps, two minutes of silence, or perhaps an hour, when Winter and Jacin pass by the empty conference room that Cress and Iko have claimed as their base of operations.

"Hello," Winter says, doubling back towards them. She looks first at Cress, then Iko, then back at Cress. "Is something wrong?"

"Yes," Cress says.

"Cress has a date," Iko blurts.

Winter blinks. Behind her, Jacin also blinks. And then he starts laughing.

Winter claps her hands together and skips the rest of the space towards them, curling up cross legged beside Cress. "This is wonderful," she says. "The Captain finally found his courage!"

Cress squirms uncomfortably, feeling sick and embarrassed. She looks down at Winter's soft, gauzy dress and inspects the intricate pattern on its hem. It's Iko who speaks up. "It's not the Captain," she says. Winter's smile freezes just as Jacin's laughter dries up.

"Cress has a date with Niyor."

Jacin starts laughing again.

If Cress wasn't feeling so awful, she would have marched right up and kicked him. Instead she turns to Winter for help. "It was an accident," she mumbles.

Winter scrunches her eyebrows in thought, then looks at Iko. Cress watches as some sort of unspoken agreement passes between them.

"This, my dearest miniature-friend," Winter tells her with a devious smile, "is an opportunity."

"W-What?"

"One as golden as your hair," Winter adds with a sigh.

IV

Thorne spends the rest of the day avoiding Cress. He considers asking Cinder to have Niyor arrested, with charges of anything ranging from being a nuisance to treason. They could flip a coin to decide.

He reconsiders when he realises that this would go against his amazing and very original plan to reform from his evil ways and denounce all things criminal so that he may deserve Cress. How convenient.

"Why can't you just tell her how you feel?" Kai asks.

He'd gone to Scarlet looking for help, but she wasn't around. So, he'd gone to the next best thing. Well, best-adjacent.

"Because," Thorne says through gritted teeth, "it's complicated."

Kai rolls his eyes. He's like another Cinder sometimes. A cheap black market rip-off for certain, but close enough.

"You're being an idiot, and Cress is trying to move on," Kai says. "Yes. This _is _so complicated. I think I'm getting a headache."

Thorne kicks Kai. Maybe he's turning into Cinder too.

V

Iko and Winter throw open the doors of her closet and stand back to survey their choices. Iko places one hand on her hip, and the other taps her perfect lips thoughtfully. Winter skips closer with her hands behind her back.

"Dress or skirt?" Iko asks.

"Dress." Winter says. "Knee length?"

"Shorter," Iko says, and then turns around to shush Cress just as she opens her mouth to protest.

For the first week after they'd defeated Levana, Cress had worn dresses borrowed from Winter, shortened and tucked by the royal seamstress to fit her petit frame. Then, right before the coronation, Iko had insisted they needed to go shopping. They'd come back with their arms full of more clothes than Cress had ever dreamed of—dresses and skirts and jackets and pants and shorts and scarves and far too many hair accessories.

"Tomorrow," Iko had said with wide, bright eyes, and a smile that could swallow both of them whole, "we'll find you some shoes."

Before she had tucked everything into her closet that night, Cress had laid them all out on her bed and cried. This was a dream, she had been certain in that moment. It was a dream and she would wake up any second in her satellite, in her tattered dress, with no friends and no freedom.

She had been crying so hard that she hadn't heard the knock, and hadn't seen the Captain push the door open a crack and peer inside. She hadn't noticed him until his arms were around her and his voice in her ear murmured soothing things, that she was okay, that she was safe.

And she had cried harder still because it was just so difficult to believe it.

It was only after she'd finally hiccuped to a stop, and brushed away the tears that Thorne leaned back to ask what was wrong. She shook her head. "Nothing," she said, "nothing's wrong."

He raised an eyebrow. "You were crying because nothing's wrong?"

She laughed, cracked and silly. "Yes."

He looked at her solemnly for a moment, trying to figure out the lie before he finally conceded with a smile—that crooked, devious grin that made her want to melt into a puddle right then and there.

"Then I suppose I'll just have to start another war to cheer you up."

She laughed.

"But," he continued, "I hope this will keep you sated in the meantime."

He dropped a box on her lap, wrapped in a white, fluffy ribbon.

"What's this?" she asked.

He reached up to mess with his hair. "Well, I thought you'd like something new for the coronation, but I suppose someone else beat me to it." He tilted his head towards the clothes laid out on her bed. "Iko?"

She nodded. Tentatively she pulled at the ribbon. The dress was blue. Teal, to be more precise. Soft like a feather, made of some sort of misty fabric. Delicately stitched snowflakes spread out from the bodice down towards the skirt, shimmery and gossamer.

She wanted to cry all over again.

"It's—"she began.

"—not stolen," he rushed to assure her.

She laughed.

Iko's delighted squeal drags her back from the memory.

With matching smiles, Winter and Iko hurry towards her and hold out their choice for tonight's date. It's teal. The dress. With snowflakes dancing on the skirt.

"It's perfect," they inform her in unison.

VI

In the end, he has to concede that Kai may be right. Though he admits so only grudgingly, and certainly not out loud.

Instead he tells Kai that _he's _the idiot, and storms out of the room as if in anger. He's been standing outside Cress's room ever since. It's been ten minutes by his count, and he has a speech running in his head about how he's trying, he's trying so hard to be better, to be deserving of her...

He keeps messing up the words as his mind replays her saying yes to that sack of lunar slime.

He grits his teeth and takes a deep breath. Okay. Okay. He can do this. She already has a crush on him no matter whom she agrees to go on a date with. He's seen her face every time he'd flirted with her, heard the hitch in her breath every time he slid his fingers through hers. He can do this.

He reaches up to knock just as the door swings open and she's standing there in that dress he bought her for the coronation.

(The coronation where he'd only danced with her once because he couldn't stop thinking about kissing her.)

She looks startled to see him. She looks—oh spades.

It hits him then _why _she's wearing a dress. She's—

All the words of that oh so carefully worded speech flies out of his head. "You can't go out with him," he blurts like the fool he is. Kai really was right. Not that Thorne would ever tell him that.

Cress looks about to say something, then she closes her mouth, then tries again. "Excuse me?" she says.

Well, he thinks, since he made his bed... "You can't go out with Niyor," he says as he steps inside, and she takes a step back with every step he takes forward. He closes the door without turning, all of his attention occupied on _her, _wearing _that_ dress, about to go out with _him._

Cress looks down at the floor, then at her fingernails, then back at the floor. "So, you _do _know his name."

Maybe he could give her his speech now. His I'm-trying-to-be-better speech. Only he's messed up, and, and instead of sincere and hopeful, he's going to sound jealous and petty. He already sounds jealous and petty actually (which, may be because he _is_).

He sighs. "Cress—"

"Why?" she asks, looking up from the floor.

Oh shit.

He did _not _think this through. He was right. Kai was wrong. This was a bad, bad idea.

"I—" Only he doesn't know what to say.

She waits for eight pounding heartbeats before she nods and looks back down at the floor. Her fingers pick nervously at her nails, chipping at what looks like a fresh coat of paint—pink like her lips.

"It's not fair," her voice cracks. "If you can't love me back, shouldn't I be able to give someone else a chance to?"

This time he looks down at the floor. He imagines her walking out right now, imagines her on that date, laughing, holding hands. He imagines her kissing that lunar boy. He imagines her living a whole life without him, happy and safe and content. He looks up. She's still looking down, lips trembling, on the verge of tears.

Shit. _Shit._

"You're right," he says, his own voice sounding strange to him. She squeaks as she looks up and he watches her eyes widen and her face turn red, red, and even redder as he takes three quick steps towards her until her back is pressed against the wall.

"I'm sorry," he whispers against her lips. And then he's kissing her.

He should have kissed her on the day of the coronation, he thinks. He should have kissed her on the day he got his eyesight back. He should have kissed her a long time ago, and every day since. He cups her face, and hears her mewl when his hands wind through her hair. He likes it better like this, this length. He thinks she likes it better too.

She doesn't hear the knock, but he does. And he keeps kissing her still. She tastes like saltwater and those expensive candy apples Winter keeps handing out to everybody. There's another knock. She squeaks as one of his hands slide down her back, and the other pulls at her hair. Her fingers tighten around his shirt as he licks at the roof of her mouth. A third knock.

She pulls away with a gasp, her hands flying to cover her mouth. Her face is aflame, her hair is a mess. Her lips must be a sight. If only she'd let him see. He can hear the door swing open but he doesn't turn away from her, and she doesn't move to see who it is. He carefully pries her hands away and slips his fingers through hers as he pulls her closer and kisses her again.

This time she moans.

Neither of them hear the door swing back shut.

She thinks she might faint. He thinks he should probably start carry a stool around because this much leaning can't be good for his back. When her hands slide away from his and rake through his hair, he forgets everything else but her.

Her, her, her.

VII

He gives her the speech eventually, between intervals of kisses. He never tells Kai he was right.

* * *

**Hey guys, so I entered the Cinder Litograph Design Contest and I've made it as a finalist (yay!). You can check it out on Marissa Meyer's website. My art is the last one. The one that says "by Snigdha". That's me. I'm Snigdha. Hello.**

**And if you like it, could you please vote for me?**

**Thanks for reading. I would love some feedback!**


	10. Wake me up

**I did a HadesxPersephone!Cresswell AU art for the mythology themed day of mini ship week and I never quite got over that prompt. So, here, have some more HadesxPersephone!Cresswell.**

**For TLC Ship Weeks, week two. Non-themed.**

**~:~**

**wake me up**

* * *

**Prompt:**

_I'd like a flat white, a day of pale skies_

_and a real kiss._

* * *

Persephone has a star etched between her shoulder blades, and a new name.

Her skin is a shade darker now, from the sun's constant caress. It makes her sad for some reason. She dreams of a grey, pale sky, and longs for something cold. Maybe snow. Maybe a kiss.

She paints her fingernails a different shade every week. Some days she thinks about dyeing her hair. Purple, perhaps. Or blue. Instead, she cuts it—short, choppy, inelegant—and watches each lock whisper down to the floor, sigh against her bare feet. She doesn't weep even though this feels like a new beginning.

She hates those.

.

Persephone's star itches. On rainy days, it burns.

Somewhere at the back of her mind, a voice tells her this is what a curse feels like. She lies down on the cool tiled floor of her small apartment and hums until she starts to drown in song.

She gets a job in a flower shop.

She can name all the names and recite all the meanings. Peonies are for prosperity, daisies are for innocence, red tulips are for undying love. She knows how to keep everything twice as fresh, knows how to arrange the flowers like a poem.

Her manager would swear she has magic on her fingertips if he didn't know any better.

.

Persephone goes to an alarming number of funerals.

She can't quite figure out why. She watches the sorrow from the sidelines and wonders why _she _feels a loss tapping against her chest. A hollow absence that manifests as an ache, spreading right down to her bones.

She chips away at her nail paint and leaves before she offers anyone her condolences.

.

Persephone wants to travel.

Somewhere less bright, somewhere less loud. Somewhere with a river where she can wade into. She misses her hair. She misses a lot of things.

She goes to the park on her way back from the shop and the ducks try to follow her home.

It rains that day. She has to sing herself to sleep because everything hurts. Especially her heart.

.

"What's your name?"

Persephone doesn't remember.

All she can see is blue, blue eyes, and all she can hear is the caramel in his voice. Her mind is a puddle on her floor. She really shouldn't be allowed to interact with the customers. She hasn't quite figured out how conversations work yet.

It doesn't matter that her name was swallowed up by a star. She has a new name now. But she can't remember that either. She remembers a pale, pale sky.

And laughter.

"Cress," she whispers, like it's a secret.

.

His name is Carswell Thorne.

Persephone repeats it. Once. Twice. And again and again and again. It feels wrong. And it feels right. She likes the sound of it, the weight of all the syllables. She rolls the words around her mouth and that's the only melody in her lungs for days.

It fits, she thinks. It's about the same shape and size as her hollow ache.

.

He buys flowers every Saturday.

Persephone adds a snowdrop to the bouquet each time. She does it almost unconsciously. Like it's a reflex. Carswell takes his bouquet, pockets the snowdrop, and thanks her. He has a lopsided, devious smile, and she wants to reach up and touch his hair to brush the soot and ash off it.

He probably has a girlfriend. Why else would he buy so many flowers?

"How do you break a curse?" she asks him on a whim once.

"True love's kiss?" he laughs.

.

Persephone dreams of him.

Often. Too often. Under a pale sky.

They sit on the ground, among the soil and bones and flowers. She sings something new and slow and it's because he can't sleep without her voice.

"I think I'm in love with you," he says in a hushed, soft, confused voice.

She wraps her song into a smile and presses it to his lips.

.

"I don't like the rain," Persephone confides.

He doesn't have an umbrella so he's letting her tell him about all about flower symbolism until the weather clears. Her star burns so sharply that it's a miracle she's standing. Well, she has surrendered most of her weight to the counter so maybe it's not that much of a miracle.

She starts to slip and a firm hands pull her up.

"Are you okay?" Carswell asks. It sounds so wrong right now, his name. It sounds so wrong.

"Yes," she tells him firmly.

And then she collapses.

.

Persephone. Persephone. Persephone…

"Cress?"

He sounds so concerned. So worried. She reaches to smooth the crease between his eyebrows, and ends up brushing off the soot in his hair.

There is soil beneath her feet. And bones and flowers. "I want to go home." she tells him.

But she doesn't remember the way back.

.

She wakes up on her bed, in her apartment.

There's a snowdrop cupped inside her palm. Carswell isn't here and it isn't raining. She tells herself it was all a dream, though the most vivid one yet. Carswell doesn't know where she lives anyway. How would he have even been able to bring her back…home?

Her star still aches but she can't bring herself to sing.

.

The next Saturday he doesn't come for his flowers.

She pleads with the manager to keep the store open for just a little longer. A little longer. Just a little. It's hours later before she starts to walk home. Only…where is home?

There's a snowdrop inside her pocket, and a lump in her throat. She finds him in the park, sitting by the pond, surrounded by ducks.

"How do you break a curse?" she asks him, louder this time. Angrier.

He looks at her for so long—just looks at her—that she starts to think that maybe he really doesn't know the answer. He swipes his hand through his hair and stands. It only takes him three steps to reach her.

The hands that cup her face are cold, but she feels warm all over.

"You know," he breathes against her lips.

"Tell me anyway," she says.

.

He shows her.

.

Persephone has a kiss burned between her shoulder blades, and a new name.

* * *

**My thanks and hugs to everyone who left reviews for the previous chapter. I hope you like this one too.**

**Happy new year!**


	11. Felix Felicis

**No, this is not a Hogwarts AU. Yes, I'm disappointed too.**

**For TLC Ship Weeks**

**Week two, day four: Lucky**

**~:~**

**Felix Felicis**

* * *

Prompt: _Lucky_

* * *

To be honest, he buys the bottle on a whim, and it's mostly because it looks pretty. _Liquid Luck, _the label informs him, and the witch with the telescope eyes smiles at him slyly. He shrugs, hands her three hundred sixty four univs and a swallow's feather, and pockets the bottle along with a ridiculously bulky instructions pamphlet.

He doesn't drink it immediately. No, he places it carefully on his cluttered desk and forgets all about it for exactly three months.

.

He's rifling through his pockets for gum while working the Rampion into a tricky descent back to Earth when he finds the instructions booklet instead. Thorne whistles. The ship tilts. Sirens blare. Darla monotones a warning. He screams a little, drops the pamphlet and forgets about it for another three months.

.

Finally, six months, eleven days after having bought his luck, Carswell Thorne drinks it without reading the instructions.

It tastes a little like tea, a little like honey. There's a bitter sting in the beginning, followed by a sour tang, but in the end it's just misty sweetness. Twelve seconds in, the dizziness hits him. He keels over, stars dancing over his eyes, pinpricks on his spine. He starts regretting all kinds of past decisions that led to this moment when it all stops with a thunderclap at the base of his skull.

A soft wind chime ringing remains a lonely echo in the background. White noise. And there's still just a dash of stars on the corner of his vision. He sees something yellow and red flutter away in the periphery, and then it's gone, and everything is black.

He passes out.

.

_Felix Felicis: liquid luck for losers._

(*)_ Dosage: Two drops every twelve hours._

(*) _It is recommended that the potion be diluted with water or any non-alcoholic beverage (except lemonade)._

(*) _Store in a cool, dry place, and do not, by any means, lick the bottle._

(*) _Do not shake the bottle, spill its contents, or smear it on oneself or others._

(*) _Do not sing back to the luck, if it sings to you._

(*)_ Do not speak to the luck._

(*)_ Do not get the luck drunk._

(*) _Do not ingest in case of nut allergy._

(*) _Side effects may include: flatulence, hypersensitivity, fainting spells, falling in love, hallucinations, inability to sneeze, death, unhappiness, anger, ability to dance the sattriya, forgetfulness, claustrophobia, unreasonable intense love for cats, bees, birds, mice, rabbits, dogs, and all things furry._

(*) _In case of overdose, cross your fingers and hope you die._

.

He wakes up with no headache, no dizziness, no nausea. In fact, his vision seems sharper, his senses more alert, and there's a really nice song playing in his head. Or maybe from the next room?

He isn't even lying on the floor, and he's sure that's where he'd passed out. But he's on his bed, fully clothed and feeling like he's on a cloud. Stars. The luck must be taking effect already. He did drink a whole bottle.

He gets up, steps out to the corridor, and towards the control room. Even the hum of his ship is more pleasant today—a soft, steady buzz instead of the hiccupping noise it had been making all week ever since a wood nymph painted a rude rune on the side hatch.

"Good morning, Darla," he says because he feels amazing. It's four in the evening.

"Good morning, Captain," Darla says in her usual monotone.

Thorne nearly trips. He had been trying to get Darla to call him "Captain" ever since he'd…acquired the Rampion. But noooo, her records indicated that Carswell Thorne was a Cadet, and Cadet was all she ever called him.

"Pleasant day?" she asks him.

He just stands there, breathing in and out, in and out, until it all settles on him. Best three hundred sixty four univs he ever spent! Oh, and a swallow's feather

"The best," he tells his ship.

The song in his head pauses for a second. He thinks he hears an excited squeal, and maybe a clap. He sees yellow in the corner of his eyes. Like a mess of hair. But when he turns there's nothing there but a wooden crate of what he thinks is crystal balls of divination he stole from a very gullible merchant a few months ago.

The song resumes and everything is okay.

.

His luck that day, and the day after that, and the day after that, _and _the day after that, is amazing.

His take offs are perfect, his landings are phenomenal. He's even able to do a loop de loop without soiling himself. He finds not one, not two, but _three _museums set on minimal security because of temporary budget cuts. He finds an auction house disabled entirely of all electronic security for a whole twenty minutes because of a grid-wide power cut. It doesn't rain _once _when he's out, doesn't so much as get cloudy. He finds a semi-precious stone just lying on the side of road, finds a full stick of gum in his pockets. He finds his favourite pair of underwear that he thought he'd lost.

He finds a cat outside someone's apartment and brings it home with him.

Most importantly, Darla still continues to address him as Captain.

It's the perfect week.

And all the while there's that song playing in his head. He loves it. Sometimes he sings along because he knows all the words by heart now. He also keeps catching the hint of blond hair rustling past in his periphery. He hasn't caught a face yet, but he thinks it's a girl. Or maybe a Wookie.

Whoever it is, seems to always be around when something particularly good happens. So, whoever it is, Thorne decides that he already likes them.

.

His perfect week turns into the perfect month.

Then it's two months. Then, three. Then, four.

He names his cat Boots.

He wonders if he might get sick of having perfect days, but he doesn't. It's comforting actually. As is that song. It's still around, playing over and over and over, and when it's silent, he finds himself humming it.

He keeps catching little glimpses of the blonde girl. He tries to follow her several times, tries to talk to her. But she's never around for any longer than five seconds, and he never even gets to see her face.

He keeps trying though. And he keeps hearing her song. And he keeps having perfect, lucky days.

.

He's haggling with a three eyed, green scaled hobgoblin (six thousand univs for the crate of crystal divination balls) when he sees his lucky "Wookie".

Turns out it's actually a girl. And she's too short to be a Wookie. But aces, the _hair!_

It goes on and on and on, like she's never cut in all her life—tied and braided and piled up like a Jubjub bird's nest. There's a bright red ribbon winding through it in complicated ties, ending in a neat bow by her waist. She looks absolutely ridiculous, and ridiculously adorable.

She skips up from behind him, a bounce in her step, pink in her cheeks, and whispers something to the hobgoblin who seems to have not noticed her at all. His expression turns from disgruntled annoyance to resignation. He sighs and forces a smile at Thorne.

"Fine, fine. Six thousand univs," the hobgoblin says. The girl grins, all bright white teeth and crinkles in the corner of her big blue eyes that look like they could swallow her face, that is, if her hair doesn't get there first. She does a small, excited bounce and claps her hands together.

"Hi," Thorne blurts.

The hobgoblin narrows his eyes. The girl freezes. She turns slowly, and her large, large eyes go larger still. Her face turns pale first, for about two seconds, then it turns the same shade as her ribbon. She looks at the hobgoblin, who still doesn't seem to have noticed her, then looks back up at Thorne, turns to look behind her, then back again at him.

She squeaks and covers her mouth.

Thorne grins.

The hobgoblin frowns.

"Nice hair," he tells her.

She jumps back, and with a little, startled poof, disappears altogether.

Thorne sighs.

The hobgoblin smiles bashfully.

"Thanks," he says.

.

He doesn't see the girl again. And his luck also seems to be fading just a touch.

It could be that the potions wearing off, or it could be that he startled the girl into abandoning him altogether. He's pretty convinced that it was she bringing him the luck. How exactly, he's not quite sure. He's not very good at understanding magic. Or technology. Or apparently magical potion girls.

His ship starts making that unhealthy hiccupping noise again.

He wakes up one morning with a hangnail. He loses his favourite underwear. And for the first time in five months, it rains the moment he steps out of his ship.

It's awful. But what can he do? How is he supposed to bring back someone who may or may not live in this plane of existence. Where does she go when she isn't bringing him luck? Back to her bottle? Unlikely. To the witch with the telescope eyes? Maybe. To hair conventions? Entirely possible.

He scrambles to find the instructions booklet he dropped a lifetime ago. He reads it from cover to cover, everything from the footnotes, to the little acknowledgements section at the back and decides that it is completely useless.

He runs out of gum the next day.

.

When Darla calls him "Cadet" a week later, he decides that this is quite enough, thank you. He thinks about going back to the witch for another bottle first. But having read the instructions three times over, he's reminded of all the warnings about overdose and reconsiders.

There's only one more possible thing to do. And it's incredibly silly.

Sitting on floor with his back leaning against his bed, he fiddles with the empty liquid luck bottle for almost an hour before his butt starts to hurt and he finally speaks up to the thin air.

"I'm sorry," he tells the girl who isn't probably even here. "Uh…Miss Felicis?"

There's no answer. Surprise, surprise. Boots walks in and makes herself comfortable on his lap. He scratches her behind her ears and she starts to purr.

"Are you there?"

He decides to just keep talking. Her song has also disappeared and he's come to realise he finds it hard to sleep without it.

"I just wanted to thank you for the luck…thing you do. And the song. Is that you singing? Because wow. You're _good. _Have you considered going professional? You should. I'd go to your concerts. So would Darla. Probably."

Silence.

He's never felt this foolish before, and he's been known to do some incredibly foolish things.

He's about to walk away and pretend this never happened (it's not like Boots is going to tell on him) when he catches a flash of yellow outside his door.

"Hello," he shouts, a little afraid that she might have already dashed off.

He hears a delicate squeak. Then, a moment later, a deep breath.

"Hi," she mumbles.

Oh, it was definitely her singing in his head, he knows immediately.

"What's your name?" He tries to get up and walk over to her, but the second he moves, she scrambles further away behind the wall. He stops and sits back down. She moves a little closer.

"Cress," she tells him.

"Like watercress?" he asks, incredulously before he realises that might be rude.

"No," she says. "Like Crescent Moon."

"Oh." A pause. "That's pretty."

She peeks shyly at him, her face almost hidden behind a curtain of honey, and he realises that _she's _pretty.

"And you're Captain Carswell Thorne," she sounds really proud to know this. And he's just over the moon to hear her call him Captain without being prompted to.

Boots wakes up. She jumps away from him and saunters up to Cress. He's afraid that the cat might scare her away but instead Cress makes the loudest, happiest shriek and gathers Boots up in her arms. It's the nicest sound he's heard ever since she stopped singing.

"Are you mad at me?" he asks suddenly because it's been eating at him for a while.

She pauses babbling nonsense at the cat to look at him. "No," she says with a confused tilt of her head. "Why?"

"Uh, it's just, my luck's not been all that great recently," he explains. "And I thought that maybe you were angry at me or something?"

"No!" she looks absolutely horrified. Or perhaps insulted. "I wouldn't do that."

"Oh. Okay."

"Our contract has run out," she tells him.

"We have a contract?"

She nods. "The potion is supposed to last for six months."

Right. Of course.

"Sorry," he says.

She fiddles nervously with her hair.

"Well," he stands up, slowly this time so not as to frighten her away. She's like a bird, or a doe—easily startled. "Thanks for all the luck."

She turns bright red again as he takes her hand, giving it a firm shake. "Best six months of my life."

"You're welcome," she squeaks.

He grins.

Then, on a whim, just like the one that made him buy that bottle of liquid luck, he leans down an gives her a quick peck on the cheek.

He hears a sharp intake of breath, a flutter of eyelashes against his cheek. There's a poof and he blinks and she's gone.

Boots lands on her feet, and beside her is a red, red ribbon.

.

The next day he finds the witch with the telescope eyes and buys another bottle of liquid luck.

He doesn't bother to read the instructions this time either.

* * *

**I almost didn't finish this on time. Almost.**


	12. Kore

**A sequel to the Persephone!Cress AU I wrote for ship weeks where Cress had been cursed into a human form and she didn't remember being Persephone.**

**~:~**

**Kore**

* * *

**Prompt:**

_our love's a monster_

_with two heads_

_and one heartbeat_

* * *

She still calls him Carswell sometimes. Says it fits.

He calls her Cress. Because she likes her new name, and he finds that it tastes just right on his tongue—like stardust and pomegranate seeds.

She smells human, still. He had thought she would stay this spring, but she doesn't. Her absence is a bone-deep ache, bittersweet and cloying. He mopes mostly, annoys the Furies a little, curses a few demigods, procrastinate with the paperwork (things were so much easier when his father was in charge and he was free to turn the occasional satyr into honeybees, and waste away his days in Elysium.)

She comes back with the first snow, tasting like saltwater. He pulls her against a tree and kisses her until she's gasping.

Her hair dissolves into petals under his fingers. _Xonaru _blossoms tickle his cheek, feather soft. The hair by her waist starts turning into cherry blossoms even as he gently cards through it. He moves to kiss down to the hollow of her throat and the barren tree she's leaned up against explodes into full bloom.

The squeak she makes is almost apologetic.

He buries his face in her flower-hair and laughs.

.

She tells him she's probably not going to talk to her father for the foreseeable future. Carswell finds that he has no problem with that. He never liked Demeter anyway. And Demeter more than just hates him.

Turns out it was he who had cursed Cress into a human. His own daughter! It was, Cress says bitterly, an attempt to get her away from the Underworld. Another attempt. How very like Demeter.

He calls himself Erland now, Cress tells him offhandedly. He's puttering about as a Horticulturist somewhere in Africa. Farawata-something or wherever. Carswell makes a mental note to simply stay away from the whole continent for a century or two. He'll just stick to all the other places on Earth that doesn't have one Dr. Erland in them. Maybe he'll visit the moon.

(Selene will make a fuss, but he knows she secretly loves him.)

"Let's run away," he suggests.

She bites her lip. "Didn't we already do that?"

.

He hates Spring. And it's only because he loves her.

.

_When he first meets her, her hair is so long he's a little scared of it._

_She's been following him for a while, he knows. With her eyes, with whisperings of her feet. He doesn't care enough to confront her, and just like that one fine day there she is by the gates of his realm, chatting away merrily with Cerberus, who looks less menacing, and more star-struck._

_He swallows a frown and smiles something charming as he takes her hand and kisses it, eyeing the coiling, winding, tumbling waves of her messy, messy hair. She looks a little ridiculous, he thinks. A lot ridiculous actually._

_She let out a startled squeak and everything, including Cerberus's fur explodes into flowers._

.

She sends him a postcard from Assam, and a photograph of her with a foxtail orchid woven in her hair.

He fiddles with his wedding ring—twisting it round and round and round. The tree he kissed her against is barren again. He watches the last flower wither away and feels a branch twist in his heart.

Round and round and round.

.

_He doesn't break hearts like hers. He avoids them entirely._

_He knows what she feels, can see it in the way she bites her lip as she pretends to not stare at him, and he knows it's in his best interest to stay far, far away._

_And yet, he gives her a tour of the Underworld and smiles as she blushes when he smoothly winds his fingers through hers._

.

He follows a trail of daisies growing in the Fields of Asphodel, through the Fields of Punishment, and finds her sitting in a grassy corner of the Vale of Mourning with butterflies hovering around her hair. She turns and the butterflies flutter around her eyelashes. She smiles and everything hurts less.

"Hello," he says, sitting down beside her.

He brushes a fingertip against a daisy. A tendril of smoke curls around it, and the petals give a shudder. She gathers herself up on her knees to reach up and brush a quick kiss against his lips. "Hi," she whispers breathlessly, and her voice melts into his bones like honey down his spine.

The butterflies recoil away from him, but she leans forward again for another, longer kiss.

Her hands clutch at his shirt while his jacket dissolves into petals.

.

When her trail of daisies starts withering in spring, he tries to learn all he can about gardening. It doesn't help. He only needs to touch a petal for it to crumble away.

"Stay…stay…_stay!" _He finds himself pleading hopelessly to a flower, kneeling in the Vale of Mourning, dirt under his fingernails, mud on all his clothes. Surrounded by dead plants.

"I'm not crying," he mumbles to the Fury holding the watering can for him.

Scarlet rolls her eyes, "I didn't say you were."

.

_She stays._

_That whole summer she stays, wandering the Underworld, befriending the Furies. He keeps finding new things growing all over the place—hydrangeas by the Styx, Venus Fly Traps in the Fields of Punishment._

_He finds notes in the corner of his parchment, by the margins of his list of the damned and the punishments they're due: suggestions. He doesn't recognize the hand so he assumes it to be hers—the strange, doe-like creature who seems to have infiltrated his kingdom almost soundlessly._

_When he catches one of the Furies teaching her how to carry into effect the curses of men on the souls of the dead, he merely watches her as her ridiculous hair flutters in the wake of her power._

.

Hermes's scrawny new intern quakes under the gleeful green-eyed gaze of Cerberus. Though he's in his single-headed, human-looking form, his still looms large enough to even give the stoic ferryman the shivers (which is saying something because nothing gives Jacin the shivers). Cerberus smiles; makes a show of examining his nails.

Carswell takes his time signing for his package because he's rather enjoying this.

The messenger boy shakily hands him a box, wrapped in neat brown paper, and scrambles off without even waiting for a tip. Cerberus smiles wider.

The package contains a small vial of seeds and a larger vial of something murky and brown with instructions on the label about dosages. The seeds he learns are of daisies, and the disgusting liquid is some sort of plant elixir.

He thinks it's from Cress until he reads the accompanying note:

"_You don't deserve her."_

.

He sends the dear Dr. Erland one of those "I'm sorry for your loss" cards, but with the words sloppily crossed out and replaced with "Thank you."

.

_When they come for her, to bring her back to Olympus, she stays put, tugging at the weeds in the_ _garden behind his palace._

_Why are you here, he wants to ask her. Instead he sits down beside her, listening to her frustrated mumbling with bemusement. He picks up a strand of her hair and winds it around a finger. It remains for a moment, before unraveling into snowdrops._

_She lifts her head, staring up at him with large, wide eyes—blue like a summer sky and big enough to swallow her face whole. He leans forward and with growing amusement feels her gasp against his neck as he kisses the tip of her freckled nose._

"_Would you like to stay?" he asks._

.

She's small and bright and likes to grow _flowers_. Everywhere.

Yet, the souls of Tartarus shudder to mention her name, recoil from even whispering it. He holds her name on the tip of his tongue and tastes its honeysuckle sweet hurt through all the months she's gone.

.

He runs across the Styx, uncaring about Hermes's laughter and Jacin's disapproving _tsk_, and envelops Cress into a hug. She comes in the summer this time—just like the times of old.

Her laughter in his ear is like the first taste of ambrosia.

"You missed me!" He doesn't understand why she always exclaims it in a marveling, unbelieving sort of way. How could he have not missed her?

"Of course," he says. "Without you here, Scarlet makes me do all the work. Me. Work." He shudders dramatically.

She laughs.

.

_The gods find them in the garden, breaking off from a kiss._

_She licks away the last of the pomegranate juice from her lips, but they remain red, red, red. He grins. She grins back._

_Demeter swears something ugly._

"_Farewell," she whispers, leaving a snowdrop on his palm._

.

He doesn't break hearts like hers. She breaks his.

Spring returns to the world and the flowers in the Underworld start to wither.


	13. Falling is just like Flying

**TLC secret santa gift fic for darkdiangeloofhades.**

**~:~**

**falling is just like flying**

* * *

**Prompt: **_cheesiest pick up line_

* * *

"Did it hurt?"

He remembers wind and ice slicing through his skin, can almost feel it here, now, years later. The fire melting his bones, carving through lungs and ribs, tearing through feathers, a thousand knives buried into his flesh. If he's silent enough he can feel the ghost of his wings weighing down on his back. If he closes his eyes, he can almost fly again.

"When you..." her voice melts into soft anxiety, hitching to a stop at the word _fell. _He turns just so to look at her: wide eyes that could swallow the rest of her if she lets them. Her fingers stop shy of his scar, tracing the air around the jagged crescents. She looks at them with such deep concentration—brows pulled together, lip caught between her teeth, as if she's trying to read some secret lost language there.

_Yes, _he wants to say. _Like you can't imagine. _It still hurts. It will always. Never less than the day it happened; he's damned to a forever of that single moment in time, experiencing it every waking moment. The scar burns under her scrutiny. It's always aching, always pulsing in the haunting of its loss.

"Nah," he says, and grins all lopsided, just the way that makes her blush. She steals a glance at him and he gasps when he feels the brush of her fingertips. It's only a sigh but that's all it takes for the knives carving into his spine to recede. A cool pulse replaces the fire licking at him, starting at the centre of her touch, which fades away just as quickly as her hand retreats back.

He turns oh so slowly, feeling dizzy and alert at the same time. She starts stepping back, starts apologising, mumbling, blushing.

_Did it hurt did it hurtdidithurtdidithurt—_

He hears the same roaring wind from years ago, feels the blaze between his shoulder blades, aching knives cutting under his skin, ash in his mouth.

But all he can concentrate on is that snowflake print of her finger pressed for just an eternal second under a crescent moon scar.

_Did it hurt?_

And he feels like he's falling all over again.

* * *

**I have another one shot lined up. A soulmate AU because of course I was going to write a soulmate AU for Cresswell. It would be a crime not to. I'll be posting it tomorrow.**


	14. and my smiles are the same colour as you

**Gift fic for my wonderful secret santa, tardis-in-the-sky.**

**I'm a sucker for soulmate AUs, any and all variations. I have a whole bunch of headcanons involving soulmate tattoos that I might some day write into a full fic. Or draw. In the meantime you can find them on my tumblr under the tag 'headcanons'.**

**~:~**

**and all my smiles are the same colour as you**

* * *

**Prompt:**_ dark_

* * *

When she was in her satellite…her prison, her home, Cress spent an inordinate amount of time looking up what a world that wasn't dark felt like. A life that wasn't variations of black, white, and creatively dull grey.

She read accounts of the amazing brilliance of colours, excited blog posts about first meetings, instant soulmate connections, everlasting love. She built up a dream in her head as she pulled that one favourite picture of the fine Captain Carswell Thorne and wondered if his grey eyes were blue or green or brown. She touched her face in the mirror and wonder if her eyes were blue or green or...oh how many other colours there were! Would, she wondered, would she know the answer if she met him?

A large part of her knew better.

And then there was the rest of her—skin and bones and hopeless hope.

.

When her satellite falls and gentle hands cut her hair, she orders herself not to cry as grey locks whisper down her back. She can't help but think the sky looks ugly in this hue as she tells him she loves him.

Trees, she decides look nice however. She likes trees, and she loves the feeling of the wind kissing her fevered cheeks. When he hugs her at the doctor's house, she nearly breaks. When he kisses her at the palace rooftop, she clutches his shirt so tight, she doesn't intend to let him go.

When Cinder asks her to pass the blue mug at breakfast, she can't help but cry.

.

Cress fiddles around with the ship computer, reading some of her old favourite articles even as she keeps telling herself she has to let go. She spends hours talking to Thorne, laughing with him, and tells herself she needs to learn to be okay with just this. She holds his hand, fingers twined against fingers, warm and safe and home and she counts all her breaths and tries not to ache so much.

Some days he looks at her so carefully, she starts to feel self conscious ,though he can't see her turning a dark shade of grey. His eyesight slowly starts to come back, bit by bit, piece by piece, moment by moment. He can't see anything properly yet. Just blobs and shapes, he says.

"You," he taps her nose lightly, "are a particularly pretty blob."

.

He takes her hands in his, holds them close like a prayer. _What are they like? _she wants to ask Cinder. _What are colours like? I've read the sky is blue._

She hates slow moments like these. When the world feels like it's wrapped them in a coccon. When he holds her wordlessly and seems to be waring in his head with only her palm against his as his anchor.

She wants to rest her forehead against his. She wants to go back to her room and lock the door.

Against her better judgement, an intrusive thought nastily suggestes, what if she starts seeing colours now? But she doesn't see anything beyond the water in her eyes.

.

Waiting for his vision to clear, they sit side by side on matching crates, facing the largest set of windows in the ship. _Today is the day_, he says. He can feel it.

So she sits with him, though neither of the know _when _in today...how long will they have to wait? He traces idle patters at the back of her hand. A star, a heart, a squiggly nonsense something.

They fall asleep against each other, backs to the uncomfortable wall, hands twined, heads leaning close.

In his sleep he murmurs something like her name but she isn't awake to hear it.

.

When she wakes up, the stars behind the window look different.

Thorne's voice sounds raw when he speaks; vulnerable and rough. "Cress," he says in a near whisper. Her hand is still clutched in his. His thumb traces a star on her palm. A heart. A squiggly something. She shudders.

"I think I'm in love with you."

His eyes, she notices as her world tilts, are blue.

* * *

**Bit narcissistic of me, but the title of this fic is a line from one of my poems that was accepted by Cicada Magazine a few months ago. Won't be published for a while though. They work about a year in advance for each issue and I've heard it'll be around eight months before I'm sent my contract, but oh gods, I'm just really, really happy to have been accepted. Still feels surreal to me.**

**Also, I'll unfortunately be gone from the fanfiction scene for a while. I've ventured into the deep, dark, scary world of original fiction, trying to write a book, and it's consuming all my time. I'll probably show up during Ship Weeks, but after that, I might not be around for a while. Apologies. I'll be back writing Cresswell as soon as I'm able again.**

**As always, thank you so much for all the feedback. They keep me alive and induce eighty percent of the unnatural whale noises I make daily, religiously.**


	15. sand and stars

**Okay so this was supposed to be like about 500 words and somehow it became 5000. Took me two whole days to finish it *cries***

**But here you are. Finally. (Though just a little bit late) Space!Pirate Thorne and Space!Mermaid Cress. The AU you didn't know you wanted.**

**For TLC Ship Weeks**

**~:~**

**sand and stars**

* * *

**Prompt:** _pirates_

* * *

In her dreams she's a mermaid of old. Gold and blue, and scales and skin, sunlight hair and waves and teeth full of song. Salt and the sea and freedom like she's never known. Will never know.

Sometimes she only swims and swims, but sometimes she wreaks a ship and saves a Captain of downy hair and starling eyes. "Pirate!" her sisters hiss—she has _sisters _in her dreams—bony, hungry hands reaching to tear something. But she hushes them all and whisks him off to the shore.

Some dreams he's only an ordinary seaman aboard a merchant vessel, sometimes he's an officer of the Royal Navy.

She brushes a lock of hair from his face, gently as she can, marvelling at the roughness of his skin. She dreams in her dream of a hundred things to say to him when he opens his eyes.

"Hello," she whispers to his closed feather eyelashes before she wakes up.

.

For the first time since she was...recruited by the Queen's army, Cress is brought up from deep sleep, not for a routine check-up, but for a mission. A honest to the stars mission. She knows it the moment the technician brings her clean, dry clothes instead of a needle. She's waited for this moment for so long it feels like she's waited for it her whole life.

A mission for the Queen. Her first mission. Her, Crescent Moon of the nameless nebula they plucked her from will be serving the Queen, and if, if, _if _she's a good soldier, a brave soldier (if if if) she may, she might be rewarded for her service. She might be set free. She might be allowed to breathe, to swim. To go back home.

She wraps a wet end of her hair around her wrist, waiting for the techs to finish draining her suspension tank and quick dry her before proceeding with installing a tracer under her skin. She's somewhat familiar with bits of the routine. They'd brought her out for a small mission once before. Half a mission. Hardly a mission. A task, almost. A chore. A favour, maybe.

Mistress Sybil had wanted a small tear in their large vessel fixed. A scratch at the seams of the wormhole generator that had rendered the _Artemisia_ unable to travel back to HQ. Cress only had to touch it, to assess the damage, the exact points, and catalogue the recovery process. It was simple enough and Cress had done her job, her task, her favour diligently.

She will do this with similar dedication too. This mission. Her real mission.

It's Mistress who comes to brief her, in her flowing robes and dagger lips. Such anger under her eyes. She shoos the techs away who hover like bees, buzzing and anxious.

"Has she been tagged?"

"Yes, ma'am," a thin-lipped boy holds a scanner over her. "All readings are healthy. She's green."

Mistress nods and with a sharp gesture of her nails to follow, turns away and starts walking. Cress hesitates a moment until a tech gives her a gentle push and she rushes to catch up.

"This is your target." Mistress hands her a port.

Cress's cold fingers grasp the colder metal. The screen has a picture of a vessel similar to the one they're in. But smaller, she supposes. The text at the bottom names the craft a 214 Rampion.

"It's a cargo ship but it's undergone some modifications." Mistress says. The downward slit of her lips moves downwards still.

Instead of scrolling through the text on screen—the concise bit of information Mistress feels fit to provide her with, Cress' greedy fingers tighten around the port and only a shift in her concentration is required to establish a link with the ship's mainframe

The Artemisia's network engineers don't see her infiltrate their systems, can't detect her presence gnawing through their firewalls, penetrating their database. For all the tests they've conducted on her kind, Lunars seems to know only the basics about Shells. Only what was already known, to be honest. They have no idea that Cress has been ghosting around their network for years, ever since they brought her here, screaming, and crying, and kicking, and begging.

She had almost torn the Artemisia to shreds then. Almost blown up all six of the reactors she could detect. Almost killed every monster on board.

Her neck tingles with the ghost of a shock collar from once upon a time.

"You're expected to dismantle the craft." Mistress lifts a smooth finger and her nail scrapes across the side of Cress' neck, a non-verbal threat trailing like fog in the air. "There will be no survivors, understood?"

Cress can only nod.

.

She's sent to the prep team to be dressed and further injected with substances that Cress can't identify. Another tracer is embedded to the back of her neck. A tall, scarred man starts to braid her hair.

The port is still with her, and she's expected to be reading up on her assignment, her mission, her quest. But she's gathered all she wanted. The ship they want her to raze is a pirate ship. Which explains the modifications that Mistress talked about, because those are more of the offensive sort than defensive. According to the file she's been provided, the 214 Class 11.3 Rampion has been terrorizing Luna's major trade routes, has attacked eight of her majesty's starships, and once tried to attack the Artemisia itself.

_This is a Priority one objective, _the concluding text on her port reads. _Clean Luna's starspace. Leave no survivors._

It's almost a righteous quest, Cress thinks. Almost.

Over her years aboard the Artemisia_, _when she wasn't dreaming, Cress had spent reading and watching and gathering information. She knows all about pirates. From first era history books and second era fiction and third era net dramas.

Her cause is right, she tells herself. She's in the right. Pirates...pirates are evil. They're the villains, and in stopping them she'll be...she'll be a hero.

Crescent Moon of some nameless nebula, brave soldier of the Queen's Shell army.

But...there's something else about the 214 Rampion she knows that isn't in her file. Something she's scrounged up from the Artemisia's mainframe. Something that could very well make her heroic cause sinister and...

_No survivors, _Mistress' voice rings and Cress struggles not to vomit.

.

They let her out as close as they can to the Rampion's co-ordinates without getting detected in turn. It only takes a moment for Cress' lungs to adjust from the oxygen heavy atmosphere to her natural environment. This is, Cress thinks, what the human concept of heaven must feel like. She kicks off the landing port, off the cursed ship, off her prison and she _swims. _

When Mistress had let her out to heal the broken wormhole generator, Cress had cried afterwards when she had to be dragged away to her tank. To the constricting glass and water and sleep.

She closes her eyes and probes for the Rampion, and inexplicably sees a blue, blue sky and sea foam, the cracked hull of a piratemerchantnavy ship and starling hair and starling eyes and _oh._ She wrings herself out of the dream, forces herself forwards and faster.

The ship isn't far. She could crack this one's hull just like the one in her dream. When she touches its surface, it's warm like it's not supposed to be. There's a strain in its hum, a hiccup somewhere in the wires and currents and metal that feels like illness. Like a fever.

They must be burning hot and fast, Cress supposes. The cloaking device is in ruins, the shields are at minimum capacity, and they only have their speed to stay safe, stay free.

Only, she had caught them now, hasn't she? What does that make her?

_No survivors._

Cress shudders. The Rampion has a secret though. She knows. She can dismantle the ship here and now. She can feel two power cores and all it would take is a little nudge to make the feverish fragile things implode. But there's a delicious secret here, and after all those years and years and years of concocting futile escape plans, this once, this one might be a chance.

Mistress doesn't know she can complete her objective with only minimal contact. If this...if this doesn't work, she can always say that she needed closer access. There's only a quiver of her lips, just a slight tremble before she grits her teeth and forces one of the podship hatches to open for her.

And she slips in like a dream.

.

Cress nearly collapses into a faint when she has a close call with one of the crew within her first minute inside the ship. She knows what pirates do to stowaways. She's read all about it, watched enough net-dramas to carry her heart in her throat as she walks the surprisingly cool floor, her bare feet whispering hastily as she breaks into a run and hides behind the first vent she finds.

It's easy enough to twist her small body into the small space, and as she hesitantly begins to move, she devices a destination in mind.

The underbelly of the ship is dark and dusty, and as she'd expected, hardly visited. She'll be safe here, she hopes. The crawl of wires and networks and control boxes and ports here are everything she needs to know everything there is.

.

It doesn't take her long to find the dainty, dirty, pretty secret the Queen's wanted; the whole purpose of destroying this ship and its crew, and why Mistress wants no prisoners, no survivors. The girl does not look like how Cress had always imagined a princess. She looks worn and frustrated and about Cress' age. She looks so full of glamour and stripped to the bones of it at the same time. Linh Cinder looks like a true pirate, all hard edges and stained fingernails. She looks like Cress' escape.

Cress buries herself in wires and settles down for some deeper probing of the ship and its crew. And this princess pirate of hope.

.

In the end she decides these pirates are nothing like the pirates she knows. They're more heroes than they're villains. They're more revolutionaries. Rebels fighting against an unjust queen, and Cress had always known her Majesty was something twisted, and she'd always known the rumours about what really happened to Princess Selene.

She watches the princess keenly. Watches her train and eat and sleep. Watches her cook and repair and restore. She also monitors the rest of the crew, and goes as far as to minutely research their backgrounds as well. She finds herself scared to the bones by the wolf hybrid soldier on board. He's one of the Queen's. He was. Cress supposes it's quite romantic how he's found love in the equally scary, beautiful, amazing pilot. Her skills are what that's kept the whole of them from being arrested. That, and Cinder's quick repairs. Though there are still a whole lot of things wrong with the ship.

There's an android on board as well. Iko. And if she wasn't so..._human_ Cress might have taken a peek inside her data banks too, to analyse the crew better. But she only observes from afar. Probing Iko would feel too much like invading personal space.

There's the crew surgeon and there's just something about Sir Jacin Clay that Cress finds she dislikes, though she can't quite pinpoint what it is. Maybe it's the way he argues with Iko, or the way he makes Scarlet grit her teeth. When Cinder smacks him upside on the head one, Cress all but claps.

Then, of course, there's the Captain himself. Carswell Thorne. Cadet Carswell Thorne. Deserter of the American Republic Air-force. ID number #0082688359. She has a whole folder about him. And perhaps a little too many photographs. He reminds her of a dream, the dream, her dream. She wants to reach across the wires and networks and screens and touch his hair to know for herself if it's as soft as she imagined.

It only takes so long for her to make up her mind. She reaches for the tracer on her neck first, slides a finger across it and it's gone. Dead. Broken. She touches her wrist next, and the breath she takes next almost tastes like something new.

.

She doesn't intend to establish contact with any of the crew at first. She only tangles herself deeper among the wires and starts repairing what she can. If anyone notices the softer hum, the cooler walls, they don't mention it. That is, until...

She watches through one of the cameras in the cockpit as Captain Carswell Thorne stares intently at a temperature reading. He rests his chin on his hands, squints his eyes, brushes a hand though his hair.

"Darla," he says, "is this right?"

"Core temperate has dropped twenty-six point eight degrees since yesterday."

"I can see that." Thorne makes a soft hum at the back of his throat. "And it's for real?"

"Affirmative, Captain."

Cress nibbles at her hair, hoping against hope he work ask anymore question. She's avoided detection by the ship's computer so far, but if Darla starts looking for her specifically, she'll be found. She'll be caught.

"Was it Cinder?" Thorne asks.

"Negative, Captain. I've been unable to trace the source of the specific repair prompts. But I can—"

"It...it was me."

Cress immediately regrets it as a hundred other possible alternatives come to her just as she speaks up though the audio port. Frantically, she reaches in search of Darla's data banks and internal code and starts to hurl her with command prompts to ignore the new voice, to go with it, the intrusive element is friendly, she writes hurriedly. A friend. Darla accepts the new codes and settles down.

She can see the Captain reach for his gun though. "And who might you be?" He sounds so casual, lazy almost.

"I—I'm the secondary auto control system. I...was woken up when the ship's internal system started experiencing heavy malfunctions." More reworking of Darla's codes to accept this story. She can't have the 'primary' AI questioning her.

It's such a ludicrous pile of lies, the Captain could never believe her.

"You don't sound like an AI," he says. "Why would the Rampion need a secondary auto control anyway?"

Cress scrambles for an excuse. Any excuse. "I'm...I was..." her voice cracks. Her breath hitches. This was an awful, awful idea. "I was the primary but I was decommissioned," she says softly. "My personality chip was diagnosed faulty."

She prays, she prays he'll accept this. She remembers Iko, and hopes he might.

She watches his fingers slip slightly from the gun. "And you fixed the Rampion?"

"As well as I could," she says. "One of the cores is almost depleted. Your shields ar—"

"Those are your shields too, sweetheart." He leans more easily against his chair. Lounges almost. She finds her face heating. Her fingers wind around the wires tighter and somewhere a light flickers on and off.

"The shields are damaged and running on the lowest setting. Cloaking will only be functional for two more days and—"

"We don't have cloaking," he interrupts.

"Yes you—we do. It's damaged and I can't fix it further without new parts."

"What parts are those?"

Cress quickly looks through the database, consults a manual, and another before she gives him a list. The Captain nods knowledgably, plucking a port from his belt and scrolling through it, probably look up the parts. "I have no idea what any of those are," he says.

"But," he lifts a finger, "there's a lovely mech ship headed this way. On route to Space Station Calcifer D-6. ETA..." he consults his port. "Eighteen minutes, forty-five seconds."

He grins at the camera roguishly and she tries her best not to squeak aloud. He stands up. "I'll alert the crew."

She nods, forgetting he can't see her. "O-okay."

Pausing by the door, he asks, "Do you have a name?"

She bites her lip, her heart is like a small terrified animal trying to break through her ribcage. "Cress." It comes out like a whisper but she knows he has heard her when he grins again and she's ready to melt into a puddle on the floor.

"Nice to meet you, Cress." He sweeps into an extravagant bow. "Captain Carswell Thorne at your service."

.

The cloaking device is all the way on the other side of the ship so Cress has little to worry when Cinder ventures into the lower floors of the Rampion to install the newly acquired parts. She watches the mechanic at her work from her little nest of wires, hands and hair tangled.

When the device is functional again, the ship lets out a brief, loud hum. They had also retrieved a core to replace the depleted one, and the Rampion is functioning much smoother now. From the corner of her eyes, Cress catches the Captain pat the nearest wall from his seat at the cockpit.

"Thanks," he says.

"You're welcome," she mumbles into her hair.

.

"Captain?" she asks timidly.

"Mm?"

"Are oceans really as big as the netscreens say?"

He must think it's such a strange thing for an AI to ask. She could ask the others. The crew has taken to her presence warmly enough, and Iko is a frequent video game opponent, but Cress feels a slice more comfortable talking to the Captain then the others.

"Yeah," he says. "You've never seen one? Flown across one?"

"I've seen photographs." She plucks a few strands of her hair and starts braiding them. The long, neat braid the prep team had sent her in had come undone weeks ago.

"We should go then," he says immediately. "Easy enough now that we can cloak ourselves."

"Really?" she whispers, though she knows it's something so trivial, so wasteful to ask.

"Definitely."

.

She has figured out the perfect time slot when everyone is asleep and she can venture out for food and a bath and relief. It took some time, and a few scary almost encounters before she got the timing just right. She makes sure to use everything with care enough that her presence isn't noticed. After running through the cargo log, she even manages to scrounge up a spare American Republic Air-force uniform that falls like an overlarge dress in her small figure and an honest to stars ratty, faded cotton dress. The swish of fabric against her knees makes her squeal in delight and she skips all the way to the kitchen.

Cress had expected the pantry to be filled with canned, preserved food like it was in the Artemisia, but once she saw Scarlet dancing around the kitchen, messing with flour and eggs and chocolate, she hadn't been surprised to find all kinds of delicacies covering the kitchen she'd only ever seen on the net screens before.

It takes quite some herculean will power to not simply stuff herself with everything she sees until her stomach is sore and sated. She samples whatever she can in minimalist terms and envies the crew until she's green as Scarlet's pea soup.

She sneaks some few dry snacks from the back of the pantry, and if the Captain hears her chewing between conversation the next day, he says nothing about it.

.

He truly takes her to see the ocean like he suggested they should.

It's between supply runs, and the crew doesn't protest this unnecessary detour. Cress presses her fingers to the wires, and the wires to her face, lips parted, eyes wide, wide, wide. Her breath snags, catches somewhere between her teeth and her tongue and she holds it there as Scarlet dips the ships lower, lower until they're almost skimming across the blue, blue, blue waters.

It's so big, so vast, so _beautiful._ It looks like the sea of her dreams. And maybe that was an ocean after all. It looks like it could swallow her whole and she'd let it. She watches through eight eyes, eight outer cameras of the Rampion, eight sided views of ripples of silver and sapphire.

She gasps when the bottom skims gently across the waves. A soft slithering sound. Like the rustle of silk, or the hiss of steam. In her periphery she catches the Captain leaning against one of the ship's larger windows, hair tousled, shirt sleeves pulled back. Beside him, Iko presses her fingers to the glass just mumbling "wow" over and over again, and arm in arm with her Linh Cinder, Princess Selene, Pirate Mechanic stands quiet and still and awestruck.

Cress wishes she could be there with them. Her hands clutching the Captain's palm in between them, pressing a thank you to the centre so he can hold it there until the warm molasses in her breath seeps into his lungs.

He grazes the side of the wall he's leaned against with a knuckle, then taps it like a knock. "Is it like the net screens?" he asks the humming metal.

"Better," she says.

.

"I can get you a body you know," he tells her one day, all of a sudden, in the middle of a virtual game of cards. He throws his words carelessly as he studies his draw on his port.

"I don't—" she begins.

"Like Iko. She was the Rampion's auto control system for a while. I won her body in a gamble. While I was _blind!" _he says with devilish grin. "So you can trust that I have good taste."

"Um..." She has already started to imagine herself as someone else, someone taller, prettier. Silken hair, smoky eyes, confidence under her chin. Of course she has to remind herself that she's not really an AI with a faulty personality chip.

"Or you can always pick what you want."

"No. I'm okay. I don't want—" she takes a deep breath. "I'm okay. Thank you."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

Even though she shouldn't be feeling this way, something twists in her gut. For just a moment, just this moment, Cress wishes she really _was _an auto control system with a human personality. Then she could have a new body and she could be there, with the rest of the them, with Captain Thorne. Helping them, a part of them, part of a crew, part of a...family.

She looks down at her hands, tangled in wires, chipped fingernails. She won't be here forever, in her nest under the Rampion, masquerading as its secondary auto control. When Pirate-Cinder-Princess-Selene has finished her training, when the crew has managed to recruit enough allies, there'll be a revolution. There'll be a war. And win or lose, Cress will have to untangle herself from the wires and circuitry. She can half imagine what the Captain's face would be like when he sees her for the first time, discovers who she is, _what _she is.

She can almost she blue waves and downy hair and accusatory eyes.

.

"Mermaids!"

Cress is dreaming again when she's jerked awake by the Captain's cry. For one statico heartbeat moment fear winds up her ribs at discovery, but no, they haven't caught her. Through her eight eyes she sees them—her sisters who are not.

Brine-touched skin, hunger lips. There are three of them, reaching, clawing, swimming though nothing and stars to tear them into red, yellow, orange.

"—to battle stations!" The Captain's command is transmitted to every room, to every crew member, echoing softer a second time, past the booming first. Scarlet sweats in the first pilot seat, the Captain grits his teeth, studying their stats, adjusting navigation.

Everyone else is scrambling to the weapons deck, warm hands on warm guns, the modifications that Mistress Sybil had despised so deeply. Cress twins herself tightly to the ship's mainframe, seeking deeper, more intimate access, to the very codes and currents of the vessel.

_I'm a friend, _she whispers, _I want to help._

Scarlet tries her skill's best but Cress can feel her not-sisters closing in, faster, and faster. One is so close Cress can see the Lunar seal engraving on her moon coloured clothes. Hands touch the Rampion's outer surface. A harsh command is screamed though, and outside Cress's not-sister Shell grins through knives for teeth.

_Don't listen to her, _Cress tells the Rampion gently, soothing fingers running circular patterns on its wires. _She isn't your friend. Don't listen to her, she wants you to break._

If the Mistress' Shell soldier looks confused, Cress doesn't see it. She can feel more hands, long fingernails digging into the Rampion, metal turned flesh for a moment. _Don't listen to them._

She croons, she sings, she sooths, gentle to her non-sisters' grating screaming commands. Fingers draw patters of circles and whorls and letters of affection as outside nails scrape and scratch. Some small part of her can hear Scarlet yelling profanities from her station. Beside her the Captain draws his brows together. "Why aren't they attacking?" he whispers almost to himself.

"Do you _want _them to, you fu—"

Cress grips her wires a little tighter. _We should shake them off, _she suggests to the Rampion. _Ask them to leave, don't you think? They're not welcome. They mean us harm. They're not your friends. They're not our friends._

There's melody in her coaxing. Enticing, alluring, deadly, safe. Only one of her against three of them. Petite Crescent Moon of nowhere and no one singing alone to zeroes and ones.

_Don't listen to them!_

Cress hears Scarlet curse the loudest when she makes the lights go out. She takes the power off from every non-essential application and directs everything outside, outside. Her sisters don't expect the attack. They scream when the Rampion's two jittery power cores grasp them by their hungry wrists and surge through their bones.

Cress feels the ghost of a burn around her neck and sobs but doesn't stop until her Shell not-sisters let go. She sees Scarlet jumping into action immediately. "Cinder!" she screams into the public comm system. "Did you install the hyperdive capacitor?"

"Yes, but I haven't run the compatibility tests yet. You can't—"

Scarlet screams back something very vulgar that makes Cress squirm and Captain Thorne grin.

"Thanks," Cinder mumbles.

Cress releases her control of the Rampion, letting Darla take over as she falls, falls, falls. Absently she notes the ship groan as they jump into hyperdrive, before she has started to dream.

.

On her dream sand gold shore, she drags her pirate Captain to safety. He has never woken up here, in this world of hers. This time, this once, the Captain looks like her Captain. Carswell Thorne: pirate, rogue, friend.

She touches his cheek gently. In the first and second era books of Cress' liking there were often sleeping princesses. She brushes sand off his lips and wonders what wakes a pirate. Gold and treasure perhaps. She leans down and her honey hair whispers against his forehead.

"Wake up," she says, pressing her salt lips to his warmth.

He listens.

.

In this dream, she's a stranger. He looks at her as such.

They've never met in the world of real things either, she notes sadly. Not really. Not physically. She's only a voice in the walls. An imaginary control system with an imaginary personality.

From somewhere far away, a distance too great for her to fathom, Cress hears a voice, familiar and frustrated. "Where is she?"

A princess answers. "I don't know. She's not here. See, this is Darla's chip. There's nothing next to it."

"Where's the secondary—"

"There _is _no secondary auto control system. I've checked the logs and the Rampion only has one AI. It's not designed to have a second one; there's no slot, no—"

"But she _was _here! You heard her."

"Look, calm down. I'm having Darla run a full system scan. If she's here, we'll find her."

A warm forehead presses against her. Somewhere far away her Captain leans against a wall. His starling stranger eyes are sad. "Wake up," he says fiercely.

"System diagnostics complete. One unidentified life form detected."

.

They come with guns, she's sad to see.

Her Captain and the princess and the android and the pilot and the wolf and the surgeon. Her crew mates. Her friends. Her—nobodies.

They have stranger eyes.

"Cress?" the Captain, her Captain asks hesitantly. They're too far away to quite see her properly. She warps a cord of wire around her finger.

"Mermaid!" someone gasps before she can answer. "It's a mermaid!"

Six guns on her. Even her Captain's. She could never run. She's read what happens to stowaways. But do starships have planks?

She had dreamed in her dreams a hundred different things to say to the pirate captain but nothing comes to her now. Her fear addled mind starts reaching for instinctual defenses. _No survivors, _it whispers to her helpfully. _This is a priority one objective._

She removes her fingers from the wires and sinister temptation and takes a deep breath.

"Hello." She looks them all in the eye, one stranger after the other before she rests of the Captain last. Former cadet. Carswell Thorne. Deserter of the American Republic Air-force. ID number #0082688359. She has a whole folder about him.

He makes a small noise at the back of his throat when he hears her voice, maybe hears an old echo of its laughing in his memory. The hand holding his gun shakes a little, just a little. She gathers up her knees to her chest, arms circling herself, wires in her hair and around her feet, stardust under her eyes.

She almost looks like a mermaid of old, like she belongs among pages of the first era.

She expects him to say something flippant, something casual and dismissive to show the tremor in his hands is nothing. She even expects him to shoot her perhaps.

But his voice breaks when he looks at her.

"I dreamed of you," he says.

* * *

**If there are any mistakes, let me know. I didn't go through this very thoroughly. **


End file.
